COVID Isn't Over

everything is fine, and that. Yeah, we have some things that we need to do with regard to I don't know, maybe stopping or halting or minimizing the five hundred deaths that are still happening a day, which is resulting in about three thousand deaths per week to the COVID nineteen virus. To me, when we are no longer having a nine to eleven type catastrophe each and every week, that to me would signal that we are quote over the pandemic.

If President Joe Biden had followed up his statement by saying, this is no longer a pandemic because COVID nineteen has become endemic to America because of the fact that we had governors and a president prior to him that called the COVID nineteen virus a hoax that didn't want to roll out vaccines, that made it seem as if it was a government conspiracy to get your DNA and data that maybe twenty five percent of the population wouldn't still

be unvaccinated and people wouldn't still be dying. That if we had banded together right and made this the cause of this nation to have a healthy, robust health infrastructure, right, then we could then say to ourselves, oh, yeah, job well done, mission accomplished. But that's not where the fuck we are. And that's also not what the President of the United States said. Right now people are having to pay out of pocket once again if you don't have insurance to be able to get the next round of

booster shot. Why because all of the federal money that was put out for the COVID nineteen response has dried up and Republicans say they're not going to give people anymore. How do you turn around and make this some type of campaign when the President himself has just said that the pandemic is over and so any relief aid right that now, this White House, this administration was looking to get. How do they think that they are going to get that when they have gone on the record on national

television and said all is well. That is, of course, until we head into yet another winter season under COVID, where we know that that five hundred deaths that we have just become so okay with begins to spike once again, or as other scientists and doctors have been saying, but again haven't been publicized, that there is probably a new variant that is coming. This is not hyperbolic, folks. This is called follow the fucking pattern. Follow the pattern, right.

So the fact is that we can spend over two goddamn weeks following a colonizer to her grave, but we can't spend any amount of time educating the public on the fact that, yeah, we are actually still in the midst of a national health crisis, and why that crisis has been exacerbated is because we have never had a strong fucking health infrastructure in this country to fucking begin with. That it has only been strong for those that have either worked for corporate overlords right or have been able

to fund their own healthcare out of their pocket. Either way, that means that it has been money that has allowed you to have the healthcare that you have needed because remember when the black man, when the black president came out and said that he wanted to give Americans healthcare, they decided to protest him. I swear to god, you know, folks, there are days when I'm just like, this bullshit is just too fucking much, right, Like you understand the power

of messaging, the power of words. We know that we have. And what Nathan will tell us in a bit coming up in our conversation is that we have been fighting multiple wars in this country, the war of messaging with regard to COVID to get people to understand that how this virus was couched and presented by Republicans was a fucking lie that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. That's right.

It was the Trump administration, backed by the Republican Party that is the reason why hundreds of thousands of Americans died by the time that Joe Biden was sworn into office. Because if in fact, we had a president and a party that gave a fuck about the lives of people, we would never have gotten to the number of deaths

that are now have exceeded the million mark. Ever, but we don't talk about this anymore, and what Jonathan and I will talk about is not only the president's remarks, but Jonathan will talk and walk this fine line between capitalism, the poll of capitalism, and public health, which is where we find ourselves because there is nothing more important than the almighty dollar, and there is nothing that is a bigger driving force in this country than the greed of

the rich and the white. There are days, folks when I'm like, oh, you know, things don't seem that bad, and then there are weeks when I'm like, God, this shit is just unrelenting and it's never going to end. As we had into mid terms, which are still pretty much a motherfucking toss up, right, Like, we honestly don't know where midterms are going to end up. And frankly,

you know how I feel about Poles. Right right now, Abbott is up in the polls in Texas, and I'm sure that those polls were taken before he'd started to start trafficking motherfuckers across the country, right, And maybe if the media actually referred to the heinous dehumanization that we are witnessing across our screens, maybe then those poll numbers for Republicans would go into the toilet but that's not what corporate media overlords want, right, These are the people

that they want to bring on their air waves so that they can show both sides. It is up to us. It is up to us taking our health in our own hands. It is up to us to take the importance of our democracy into our own hands. Because folks, if you were sitting around and waiting on any leader to tell you what to do and how to do it, at this stage, you're gonna be waiting a long time. Because understand that people in power are motivated by different factors.

Your motivation in order to keep yourself safe and healthy. It's about your health and safety. Your boss doesn't give a fuck about that. That's why they went to the CDC and they said, cut down, cut down that quarantine from ten days to five. People can come back to work in five days. Just wear a mask, doesn't matter if you're going to kill over or pass out you have a migraine that makes you feel like your brain

is coming through your fucking skull. So long as you can remain in front of that computer or standing up at that cash register, no one is going to care about you more than you care about yourself. That's the message here. So if you care about your health and well being and productivity, then you need to make your health a priority. And it doesn't look like waiting around for those people to tell you what you need to do in order to stay safe and healthy. We know

that masks work. We know that winter brings a darker time in the COVID nineteen pandemic. So folks, you make sure to keep yourself safe and those around you. We have all of the tools now, we don't need their rhetoric and bullshit to tell us what it is that we should and shouldn't be doing. Coming up next, my conversation with our very own doctor Jonathan Metzo. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by

a Shanty Gooler, the president of Emerge. BGG, is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of politics. Join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issues basing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights, to climate change and more.

Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts, get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show On Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter.

Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast New episodes every Tuesday. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to sit down with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, I am beyond thrilled, particularly when Jonathan over the weekend, President Biden joined sixty Minutes in Detroit for the first car show

in three years since the pandemic. During the course of that interview, he was asked if the pandemic was over and Joe Biden, our president who came into office as tens of thousands of people were dying, as we did not have a vaccine, there were no shots in arms, hospitals were overwhelmed and collapsing. He pledged that he would fight this virus until it was eradicated. Well, we're not at the dire place that we were Jonathan in twenty twenty and in twenty twenty one when Joe Biden came

into office. However, we are not clear as far as I can see, what cleared would be, as if we're saying mission accomplished, the pandemic is over. So I want to get your initial reactions to Biden's statement and what you were hearing from your friends in the medical community about that. Well, let me be clear, first, I don't know what when. I don't know what went on in that statement, And I don't know if it was just Biden learning something out or if that was part of

a strategy. And so that would be something I would want to know first of all, as kind of what was the impetus behind that. We're doing a big event at Vanderbilt today where we are actually having two pretty big time COVID doctors speak, and I'm going to ask that question in particular, and so I don't know, I don't know, and and so part of The issue, of course, is the pandemic of horse is not over. And not only is the pandemic not over, but our public health

infrastructure is is failing. The lead story in the New York Times this morning was about how we're not tracking illness the way we should be, not tracking variants the way we should be. There's probably going to be a new variant at some point soon because we're vaccinating against the other variant, and so, you know, I think that part of the issue is and we're not tracking monkeypocks,

we're not tracking polio. And the article in the Times this morning was about how, you know, decades of neglect about what should be a functioning public health system, and so part of the issue, of course, is just a statement of fact. The pandemic is in no way over. If you believe that, just talk to anybody who's suffering from COVID right now and they'll tell you that the thing isn't over. And so I think that is a

statement of fact. But I do think it's it's important to think about what might have gone behind a shroment like that. And I don't know the answer, except I will say that, like it's where I have this weird life. As you know, like I go back and forth between New York and Nashville, and so in my Nashville life, which is where I am now, the economy is booming.

We've actually just reached skyscraper max here that you can't you can't put any more cranes in Nashville because there's so many cranes dotting all the things that are you know, every place is open, there's surplus of all all the stuff. So there's been a massive move of capital, of investment. A lot of New York firms are moving down here, and part of the issue here is like they were just much as people know, I'm in the South. We you know, it's like good for you on COVID. We're

not showing our economy. We are not paying attention to this in a way. We had a lot of death here, a lot of infection, a lot of resistance. But I can say that the economy is in part booming because of a lot of things, tax policy, some lack of foresight. I feel like on behalf of places like New York that pushed a lot of infrastructure to move down here. But I contrast that with my New York life, where Mayor Adams, for example, is practically begging people to come

back to workplace. Midtown is kind of still very under capacity. Public transit is under capacity, and I think there's a kind of fiscal disaster looming for New York just about not having enough writers in the subway and not having enough taxpayers and not having enough people utilizing the services

that were built for a lot of people. And so if there is a strategy, which again I have no idea, I do think that just in my mind, comparing what I see in Nashville every week with what I see in New York every week, New York really needs a kind of boost in a way about just kind of

getting people back into circulation. And so maybe it was an attempt economically to say, look, we know COVID is going to be with us, but it's also like Midtown's going to collapse, and we're not going to have money to pay for structures, and we're going to be facing some pretty direct consequences if we don't, if we don't get kind of back to work in a way. And so that's my only guess about why he might have

said that, and it's pretty stark. Yeah good, Yeah, I mean, here's the issue that I continually have and have had throughout this entire pandemic which is still happening, which is this, I don't want decisions about public health being made about through the lens of capitalism. I don't want public health decisions being made because we have a midterm election that

is looming. And these are the things that we all said when Donald Trump was president, right, that the reason why Biden became president was because we wanted to be able to trust our institutions to be making decisions about our best interests through a lens of actually what our best interest is. And so the reality is what has happened in New York. And you're absolutely right, because I don't ride the subway anymore. Right, I do my work from home because I have the ability to do that.

And even when I am in when I am in circulation, in population, I choose not to use the subway. Right, I either walk to where I'm going, or I will or I will grab a car, right because for me, I'm like, you know what the mask mandate has done.

The subways were disgusting anyway, and frankly, like I don't feel like putting myself at risk in a city where you have, you know, Frankly, tons and tons of homeless people that have taken over the subways in a way on certain lines, I don't feel like I need to put myself in the mix there, right, and I know

that I'm not the only one. Then you have the push here where a lot of people, a lot of office workers, had the privilege and the ability over the last three years to leave New York but still incurr in New York salary. So they have moved to places like Tennessee in North Carolina and South Carolina and to different places that have a lower cost of living, but they're still banking their New York salaries and are able to live a much fuller life and because their money

goes further. That's a testament to the fact that New York does not push rent control in the way that it should. It does not push housing in the way that it should. For middle income people, it's either you need to be absolutely broke or you need to be a billionaire to be able to live in New York. Right.

So I think that there are economic issues that have always been at play, but that for instance, Mayor Adams and the mayors that came before him, right, they were always keen on linking arms with those billionaires and millionaires and saying, oh, we'll just allow this gentrification, gentrification to come in until those people pick up their money and

decide that they want it stretch somewhere else. So my issue with Biden and with this just apparent shrugging off as as we are preparing for yet another COVID winter is like, we clearly don't ever learn anything, right, and the assumption is that our memories are going to be

short term. I mean, I am going to push back a little bit on the I mean, it's a different ballgame under the current administration than the previous one, just in terms of I mean, the Biden response and the Trump response to the pandemic are not are not the same in any way the same. You know, the grownups are kind of running the show right now. But again,

there are there are issues here. And you know that Congress didn't pass any COVID funding, right and so and so people are going to have to pay for vaccines, for COVID tests for um uh. You know, there's just the economics of the pandemic and the public health of the pandemic locales are just going to have to put the bill. There's not the kind of federal money that

there was before because of decisions made of the federal one. Again, I have no idea what wood Biden was thinking, but but I do think that I do think that we're just facing a reality right now with the pandemic. UM. I don't know, like the attitude down here in Nashville is like, we're just gonna have to live with this thing.

We'll have to learn to live with this thing. And I can just say that it just doesn't feel like there's the shortage here in terms of um, in terms of like I drove to work this morning and they're like the entire skyline and this is a there are many things having to do here. But I would just say that the economy down here really never shut down.

I mean it did in a way, but but it's not like there's any push to try to get people back to work here, because I mean some they are, but but you compare compare that with New York, and I keep I really I'm saying the same thing I just said. But but like in New York, if the subway collapses, because people like me and you don't take the subway. Who who gets hurt by that? Right? It's it's not me and you, right, it's people, low income

people who need to get to work. In a way, So if public transit falls apart, new York falls apart in a way, because so many parts of the city are dependent on I mean the minute. The minute low income people have to pay thirty five dollars each way to get to work on an uber, there's no more New York. And so in a way, I just feel like New York. It's in part about housing, but it's also just there are there are many many fiscal holes that New York is in right now. I've just this

has been on my mind so much. And this was true before the pandemic. I mean the twenty seventeen tax bill. The twenty seventeen tax bill, basically all the tax deductions that people could get for having their business in New York went out the window. It led to a massive move of businesses to places like Tennessee or Dallas or Miami, which had no state income tax. And so I understand,

I mean to talk about the pandemic. I think it's super important, but I just think a place like New York is going to have to get creative again about how it can lure people back in a way that will let it build its tax base to support stuff again, because cities and states are going to have to pay for the pandemic and the absence of federal funding. And so I don't know. I'm really nervous about this, to be honest, and I hope I'm probably making no sense

right now except to say that. I mean, I just think that right now the economy and the pandemic are so connected. Again, I have no idea if that's what Biden meant, but it's just been hard to see. I think that I think that what Biden meant is exactly what was said. That we have midterm elections coming in less than fifty days or something something around that number, and Democrats are in a good position because of how

Republicans have been going after abortion. He's like, let me tip this over the edge and you know, allow people to feel like the pandemic is over. This is about money. It's about money, it's not about public health. And so my concern is not necessarily about the collapse of New York. I think that New York will continue to be New York. I think that each and every generation provides a different

iteration of what this city looks like. When you talk to people that grew up in New York in the seventies and eighties, it doesn't look like that now, right. It looks far from it in a lot of ways, a thousand times better because of you, because of crime and better infrastructure and better investment in all of these things.

And then in some areas really terrible because people of color have been pushed out because they can no longer afford to live here, right, And so I think that yes, there needed to be a push and pull and a balance. But what we also have to understand is that there is no I mean, I know that many operations are pushing their people back to work, that pushing them back into offices, but their reasoning for that is honestly bullshit.

The reasoning really is because they are leasing buildings that are costing a ton of money that they have no one inside of. But to turn around and say that people need to be in the office is bullshit, because none of their businesses collapsed because people have been working remotely. And so they tell you this perpetual lie because capitalism forced us to believe that we needed to be in a cubicle for eight to ten hours a day in

order for us to do our jobs. And now that people, particularly young people, are hip to the idea of no, I can actually do this job while I'm living my life and not the other way around, I don't want to go back to this place. So yeah, people need to start being really creative. But I think that telling the public right before winter that a pandemic is over when it's still killing three thousand people a week was

probably one of the most irresponsible things to do. Well again, I'm curious about the story of where that comment came from, and I wish it would have been articulated in a bit better way. I mean, I certainly think that this is a false statement that the pandemic is over. I think that's right. I also think that Jonathan he could have said, and I've seen this on Twitter many times, the pandemic aspect of COVID nineteen is over because it's become endemic. Because it is because now it is a

fabric of our society. Because when we had the opportunity to eradicate it, we didn't, and so now, we can't pause life right for something that is showing no signs of going away. We have had to adapt that. Again, is a totally different narrative than just saying, look around, no one's wearing a mask. People seem kind of healthy.

This is what he said. And so let's so, how are you going to convince Republicans to vote for a COVID nineteen package that they didn't want to vote to vote for when we had tens of thousands of deaths a day. How are you going to do that now? When you just said the pandemic is over. So what do you need the money for? Yeah? I mean again, it's not like there's no money. It's that states and cities are going to have to pay for things that

the federal government was paying for. And so, and we know that they're not going to right the Red States.

We know that New York right now. I think one of the other things that I saw City MD, which was one of the outlets in New York, one of the places where people were going to get their testing on a regular basis now is sending bills in the hundreds of dollars to New Yorkers saying, oh, well, you owe us all this money back, right like, which sounds like a class action lawsuit to me at some point.

But the reality here is like this president, yes, is he better than Donald Trump one hundred and fifty thousand percent, But it was still what he said was reckless. What he said was reckless at a time when we have kids that are back in school, when we know that winter is coming, and that every winter season since we've been living with COVID has incurred devastation. Yeah, again that's

a statement of fact. And again I very clearly and personally wish that this thing, whatever, whatever the message was, it would have been said a bit more clearly. You know, Fauci at different times has said the pandemic phase of this is over, and he gets a lot of pushback, and so hopefully there'll be some more clarity coming out

about this going forward. And I certainly don't think I mean, it's funny we're having this big panel here at Vanderbilt today, and when I set the panel up like six months ago, even then I thought like, Okay, we'll be after the pandemic or things like that. But it just seems like this thing just keeps reinventing itself. We have no idea where where this thing is going, as you and I've been talking about for quite quite some time here, But

I don't know. I just I guess I'm going to I think this is a very productive tension for you and I to keep in the front of our conversations going forward, because I do think that the number of people who live in New York, for example, really matters to the tax base of New York to to you know, how people get jobs and benefits and pensions from the city to The more people you have, the more you know, the more people who fill out the census, the more

congressional representation you have. Like there are a whole range of reasons why I think it's important right now for New York to protect itself because there is a lot of power and authority and capital flowing down here to the south, and so I think these things really matter. And and there's a there's a pandemic medical war going on, and there's a pandemic fiscal financial war going on, and I just think you have to kind of see both sides.

I'm I'm not I'm speaking for Biden. I have no idea what was in his comment, but I would also say that there's a reason why. I mean, the New York Public Transit has a ten billion dollar deficit in six months, New York Infrastructure twenty twenty four has a twenty five billion dollar deficit. Like that's going to change New York if that's not if that's not figured out. And so I just think that I agree with you, there's creativity and energy and goodwill and resilience in New York.

But I would also say that twenty five billion dollars deficit will change light conditions of life for a lot of people, and so and so I think there's going to be a balance here. And again I'm not talking about what Biden said. I'm just saying, you know, I mean my heart is with New York. Like I went New York to like be the center of the world, which it is, um but I think that it's just again,

these worlds I'm living in. I live in a world where there is no pandemic and everybody ignores it, and I live in a world where there people are facing it on a daily level in a much more realistic way.

And so I don't know, I feel I feel torn between two worlds right well, but I mean like as as as your friend, I would tell you, like, I think that that's like a perfect um op ed to write because I think that as we are moving, you know, I I after Biden said what he said, I am concerned about what is going to happen in the fall and winter. Um, particularly here in New York, but also around the country. UM, you know, I am very concerned with how you know, we know that new variants pop

up all the time. It doesn't just magically go away because we've decided to stop facing something. And so all I will say with folks as we wrap up our conversation today is that you know, you don't need the CDC or the President of the United States to tell you what you know is actually right. And so if you are still concerned and rightfully so, wear your mask right,

continue to wash your hands. If you haven't gotten a booster, go and get a booster, and continue to take care of yourself because you know at the end of the day, what it is that you need outside of what politicians are telling you that you need. And so at this point in time, we need to all be taking our own, our own consideration of our health in our hands and

not allowing other people to dictate how we move. So I mean, you know, remember I was in Scandinavia this summer, and I am not trying to sound like an apologist here, you know, I'm just I feel like this is an important conversation for us to be having. I will say, when I was in Copenhagen the summer, for example, nobody wears a mask there, nobody, but it's like ninety nine vaccinated and everybody lines up for the booster and that

kind of stuff. So there's just like a lot less severity and transmission, and so the stakes are just a lot lower. And so you know, our attitude about the pandemic is not separate from our investment in public health infrastructure, which has completely fallen apart. Also, and I think resources in our in our pathological zero some formulation are linked to who wins elections and who gets to allocate resources. So all these things are tied up together right now.

And so I don't know the answer except I know that things can always get worse. And on that note, job, as always, thank you for making the time to join us on wekay F. We appreciate you. That is it for me today, Dear friends, on Woke app as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show

with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws, and take a closer look at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.